The Dixie Diaspora is the phenomena of Southern Jews moving from the small towns and villages in which they settled to the larger, more metropolitan area of the region. Looking at the table below, you can see that in fact, between 1960 and 1997 there was a decline in small Jewish communities in the south and a rise in the bigger ones. There was a 37% decrease in the number of communities with 100-499 Jews.
Photo Source: Sheskin, Ira M. "The Dixie Diaspora: The "Loss" of the Small Southern Jewish Community." Southeastern Geographer 40.1 (2000): 52-74. Web.
There are many proposed reasons for the Dixie Diaspora, such as retirement migration of the elderly Jewish population to retirement homes in places like Southeast Florida. Another potential factor in the migration of Jews to larger cities is Anti-Semitism and the hardships of being one of a few Jews in a town. Stella Suberman’s family, for example, owned a Jew Store in a small town in Tennessee, but her family moved to New York so that the children in the family could develop a Jewish identity. Further, many Jewish communities declined not because of moving to the city, but because its members disaffiliated from Judaism and assimilated into the society instead.
The biggest and most convincing argument, however, that explains the Dixie Diaspora is that of education and employment opportunities.
Victims of Their Own Success
Eli Evans stated that “the story of Jews in the South, at least a major part of it, is the story of fathers who built businesses for their sons who did not want them” (Sheskin).
Jewish immigrants moved to these small towns so that they could build businesses that would allow their children and grandchildren to go to college. These immigrants, however, became victims of their own success, because in order to attend college, their children had to go to the larger cities (often not in the South) and then following their education, they stayed in the cities for employment opportunities as well as the large Jewish support network that existed there. The children of the original Jewish immigrants were not going to college so that they could learn to manage their family’s store, but rather to become doctors and lawyers. Therefore, many of them left their small Jewish communities behind.
"The demise of small-town Jewish communities and the synagogues they built is an unintended effect of the American dream” – Chicago Tribune
Source: Sheskin, Ira M. "The Dixie Diaspora: The "Loss" of the Small Southern Jewish Community." Southeastern Geographer 40.1 (2000): 52-74. Web. Source: Grossman, Rob. "Jewish Communities Fade in Small Towns." Ariticles.chicagotribune.com. Chicago Tribune, 25 Jan. 2004. Web. 20 Apr. 2017. Source: Berkman, Seth. "Southern Jews a Dying Breed as Small-Town Communities Dwindle Fast." The Forward. The Forward, 28 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2017.